...(One of the victim's) mother, Ginny, said yesterday that she would have liked to believe the deaths were accidental - but that everything that Ray did during the 'Spiritual Warrior' event almost made them inevitable.

'One of the things that horrifies me after we found out Kirby had died was to see how he behaved, to really yield his true character,' she said.

'This wasn't just a horrible accident. His own conviction in his omnipotence and his own seduction of money and wealth made him delusional.'

If you've followed my website for any length of time, you'll know I've been a pretty outspoken critic of The Secret for a while. This has been a tough road to hoe, because coming out against The Secret at the height of its popularity is in some respects a bad marketing move for someone in the personal development business. But I have my personal integrity, and I won't back something that I think is not true at best and harmful at worst.

After The Secret came out, I started a small website called "The Intention Project" to focus on using the power of intention to help make the world a better place. (One of my big beefs with The Secret was the use of spiritual power and mental focus to obtain personal wealth and "stuff" rather than helping others).

I have recently expanded this website to allow visitors to post their own intentions to share with others. Then, the website community can focus on putting positive energy on these intentions. The intentions can be for yourself, your loved ones, or the world.

As a coach, it was not easy to take a contrary view to The Secret at the height of its popularity. Certainly, I could have ridden the wave of excitement over the "Law of Attraction," marketed myself as a "Law of Attraction Coach," and maybe made more money while the hype was at its peak.

I knew, however, that The Secret was part of an unhealthy American obsession with materialism over substance, of obsessive goal-setting over spiritual peace. I saw that Americans were getting over their heads in debt and getting wrapped up in the idea that they could have it all, if they just thought positively enough.

A dear friend of mine, who was the first person to introduce me to The Secret, became a subprime mortgage broker when the The Secret hit. He made a lot of money selling mortgages to people who probably couldn't afford them. Now our economy is on the verge of collapse due to these types of mortgages.

I would not be surprised if this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we'll be seeing more exposes of the self-proclaimed gurus of "The Secret" over the next few years. Here, an Australian television reporter provides a shocking investigation into claims by David Schirmer's students that he has bilked them out of tens of thousands of Australian dollars that he was supposed to invest on their behalf. (Watch Part Three to see a shifty-looking Bob Proctor appearing guilty by association.)

Monday I had the chance to see a special preview of an upcoming film that will be out later this year (I think). As part of the transformational film genre, it might be initially lumped in with The Secret, but it seems to be very different (at least to me). The Shift is about a global shift in consciousness happening on the planet right now, where people are banding together to change the world for the better.

Byron Katie is a beautiful gray-haired woman with a twinkle in her eye and a tremendous amount of love in her heart. If you ever get a chance to see her in person, you can feel the love radiating out from her as strongly as the bright light from the sun.

She delivers her message through a simple process called "The Work," which consists primarily of writing down your negative thoughts and questioning them. It's simple, elegant, and requires no particular spiritual belief or religious dogma.

The beauty of The Work is that when you do it consciously, you'll find that it sets you free. Free from expectation, worry, judgment, and desire.

The Work not a cult, or a hyped up self-help seminar that makes you feel really good while you're there but doesn't really deliver once the high has worn off.

I had an opportunity to see Michele Blood speak earlier in the week. She is the singing Australian self-help guru who has for years teamed up with Bob Proctor, one of the main guys on The Secret DVD. I enjoyed her talk, if just for the fact that she liked to throw the F-word in there a lot, and didn't seem to take herself too seriously.

What struck me was her comments on the issue of manifesting money. She mentioned briefly that sometimes she gets criticized for her focus on wealth. She said something along the lines of: "If you want to accomplish anything, you need the energy of money behind you, and so I don't apologize for that." (I am completely paraphrasing here.)

Hmm. Well, yes, I certainly would like more money, as it would make my life easier in many respects. But do we need to be wealthy in order to achieve anything?

Since I've been very critical of The Secret, every once in a while I will poke around Joe Vitale's blog and comment here or there. (I will also freely acknowledge that his blog gets a lot of traffic, and posting there is a bit of guerrilla marketing on my part.)

Joe, as you might remember, was the guy in The Secret who likened the universe to one big cosmic catalog that you could order a Ferrari from at will. He recently wrote a post in his blog, Thresholds: Is it serving or selling? Here, he gives the typical response to people who criticize the materialism of The Secret, suggesting that those who have a problem with it are just feeling "undeserving."